Celebrating Supplier Citizenship in 2017

In 2017, P&G celebrated the second year of our Supplier Citizenship strategy. Citizenship – the efforts P&G deploys across brands, employees, operations, and business partners to make meaningful differences in people’s lives around the world – has come to the forefront of our interactions with P&G’s global business partners in remarkable ways. In March 2017, we formally changed the name of our Supplier Diversity and Supplier Sustainability initiatives to “Supplier Citizenship” to reflect integration with P&G’s Corporate Citizenship Agenda. Below are just a few highlights of our first months as a Supplier Citizenship team.

A Decade of $2B per Year Spending with Diverse Suppliers

P&G’s North American Supplier Diversity Program has leveraged the unique value of diverse suppliers to meet P&G’s critical business needs for over 40 years. In our fiscal year 1617 we delivered 2 billion dollars in spend with diverse suppliers for the 10th consecutive year. We are proud of the partnerships we have with businesses owned by the ethnically-diverse, women, people with disabilities, veterans, and LGBTs.

$100MM Commitment to Women-Owned Business Globally

We furthered our commitment to fostering relationships with diverse suppliers by partnering with Global Citizen, an organization that links NGOs, corporations, and consumers to drive meaningful change on human rights issues, and WeConnect International, a global network that connects women-owned businesses to qualified buyers around the world, to commit to spending $100MM more with women-owned businesses over the next three years.

Industry Leadership, Industry Recognition

We were humbled to have been conferred with several industry awards for our efforts in Supplier Diversity.

Top Corporation for Women’s Owned Businesses (Women’s Business Entrepreneurial National Council - WBENC)

Corporation of the Year for Women-Owned Businesses (Ohio River Valley Women’s Business Council – ORV-WBC)

Corporation of the Year (Ohio Minority Supplier Development Council - OMSDC)

First Recyclable Shampoo Bottle Made with Beach Plastic

P&G’s suppliers have been critical to advancing P&G’s work in environmental sustainability. Our collaboration with TerraCycle and SUEZ resulted in the development of the world’s largest production run of recyclable bottles made with post-consumer recycled beach plastic, and a first major step in establishing a unique supply chain that involves the support of thousands of volunteers and hundreds of NGOs collecting waste found on beaches. We are proud that this initiative was awarded the United Nations Momentum for Change Lighthouse Award.

Launch of Supplier Citizenship Scorecard

Historically P&G has asked our suppliers to complete an environmental sustainability scorecard. While this information was critical to identifying opportunities in our supply chain to drive environmentally-focused efforts, we realized that there was an opportunity to use a scorecard platform to revolutionize the way we drive Citizenship in our supply base. We are in the process of analyzing the results of the first ever holistic Supplier Citizenship scorecard and learning more about our external business partners’ approach to Gender Equality, Diversity & Inclusion, Environmental Sustainability, Community Impact, and Ethics & Corporate Responsibility. In the meantime, the response from our suppliers has been outstanding – we see firsthand that suppliers are eager to develop their own positive citizenship efforts, and are looking forward to leaving a lasting impact on our interdependent supply chains by improving their results year on year. Additional information on this topic will be shared in future blog posts.

Partnering for Sustainable Innovation

We are accelerating our work with the Sustainability Partner Innovation Network (SPIN), a unique collaboration platform that aims to accelerate our environmental sustainability journey through external capabilities and partnerships. By working collectively with our suppliers, we are driving transformational change for the business and the planet through innovation, and this team is directly engaged in many new product development concepts. Most recently, our SPIN network held an intensive three-day ideation session with the goal of developing irresistibly sustainable products to help our consumers live a guilt-free, environmentally-friendly life.

2017 has been an incredible inaugural year for P&G Supplier Citizenship, but we know that these are only the first steps in a long journey. Our team looks forward to driving more results in 2018 marching steadily ahead in our mission to improve the lives of the world’s consumers, now and for generations to come. We will do so by becoming known as a company that is governed responsibly and behaves ethically, that is open and transparent in its business dealings, that supports worthwhile causes, and that protects the environment. We will create this better world – and a better business – through our external partnerships. We look forward to taking every single step.